THE FOLK SONG ARMY DIV.
I discovered the song when Santa brought this for me (thanks!). I found the recording on YouTube…click below!
Not quite a folk song, unless we folks start singing it around. Nor is it a Civil War Song really: it was written in 1866 by Henry Clay Work (on the heels of his biggest hit, 1865’s Marching Through Georgia). This one is about Reconstruction; it channels Radical Republican rage that Black freedom was was being sabotaged by the South, and fumbled away by the despised and barely-elected “dictator” Pres. Andrew Jackson (D). But it might as well be about Pres. Trump and Sen. Josh Hawley, or Sen. Mitch McConnell, or Rep. Jim Jordan, and all the dangerous mob of MAGA Proud Boys. Hear it once or twice, and you’ll be well-armed to sing the chorus at your computer or TV screen this week when the flames of sedition are fanned. It’ll feel good!
To understand the context of the song, View Thomas Nast’s masterpiece of cartooning, from Harpers of September 1866. It captures the same boiling Northern rage that overheated Mr. Work. All those Harper’s readers, in fact, probably bought the sheet music too! Click below for a full article in Smithsonian, with a fascinating tool allowing you to scroll over the page and bring up information. It’s an absorbing, sobering, Constitutional review pastime for this lockdown Winter of our Discontent. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/political-cartoon-explains-battle-over-reconstruction-180962351/
The Valley Village View 